Schnirman's Shell Game with Taxpayers

City Manager Jack Schnirman is still not being honest; he is still playing his shell game with the taxpayers’ hard earned money.

The fancy and grossly misleading “Myth vs. Fact” chart he unveiled at the speical City Council meeting and on the city website earlier this week is just another attempt to trick our residents. It’s a shell game. The numbers are not accurate and they don’t give a fair and independent picture regarding how he is spending (actually wasting) our money.

Schirman’s numbers are based on annual savings, not year-to-date savings. Using annual figures artifically inflates the numbers as opposed to using pro-rated figures based on when Schnirman took office, Jan. 3, 2011. Whether this is Schnirman's mistake or by design, both are unacceptable from our city manager. The correct and honest way to determine these types of savings is to base them on what is actually saved since Jan. 1 through the end of the budget year, June 30, not the entire year. This only makes sense because the savings began in January, when he took office, not in June 2011. By using the annual salaries rather than the half-year salaries (which is the proper government accounting standard method), he gives the misleading and false impression that there are huge savings. But that is not an accurate picture. That’s the shell game.

If you want to get a real picture of the spending and potential savings/costs, you have to use real numbers. Schnirman didn’t do that; instead he used numbers that benefit his public relations campaign and that suit his liking. Schnirman says the total savings since January are $605,142. But when you use the real numbers based on pro-rated salaries for a half year (from January), the actual savings are half that, or only $301,623.00. That’s a huge mistake in Schnirman’s favor, but it is simply not an accurate picture!

In addition, Schnirman conveniently left out the cost of the termination pay for the employees he fired so he could hire his Brookhaven cronies and the friends of Council members Fran Adelson, Scott Mandel, and Len Torres! The termination pay the city must pays the employees that were let go is as high as $1,170,000!

Adding insult to injury, Schnirman also left out unbudgeted contracts and payouts that have been awarded. Since January, Schnirman and the City Council have awarded $240,000.00 in unbudgeted contracts, settlements and other payouts.

Therefore combined, Schnirman misrepresented the numbers to the taxpayers so recklessly, that the total cost of his actual personnel changes actually cost the taxpayers $1,108,376.62! That's quite a difference from Schnirman’s savings of     $605,142. In fact, there have been NO SAVINGS, but rather a LOSS of $1,108,376. This is not exactly the kind of number our city manager or City Council wants to brag about, but these are the real numbers.

Last, but not least, Schnirman simply just misses an important point: it’s not just about the money, it’s about the campaign promise that was made between the Democrat party candidates and the electorate of Long Beach. As candidates, Adelson, Mandel and Torres made a public pledge “to end the policy of giving friends and family city hall jobs.” It’s still on their campaign website to this day. But the fact is they have broken their promise, over and over again.

While the money issue is important, the fact of the matter is that every single person that Schnirman fired has been replaced with friends and political supporters of Adelson, Mandel, and Torres and/or Schnirman! Every single one of this administration hires is a political friend of Schnirman, Adelson, Mandel, and/or Torres. This is a blatant violation of the pledge they made, of their own free will, during a campaign where patronage and nepotism were central themes.

It is one slap in the face after another from Jack Schnirman, and people are starting to take notice. A person who once looked like a young, shining star of hope for our city has shown his true colors. It’s more of the same, politics as usual; déjà vu all over again. It’s a totally staged public relations show, and the taxpayers are paying for it. Once again, there is party going on in city hall, but the taxpayers aren’t invited!

Jack Schirman needs to stop deceiving people and stop playing his fiscal shell game. If he spent time as much time developing real solutions to our fiscal problems as he does on fancy charts and PowerPoint presentations, we might have made some progress.

Instead of fancy charts and worrying about the "rumor ethos" of Long Beach, Jack Schnirman should do what he gets paid to do: solve the fiscal situation in a way that is fair for everyone and that leaves politics out of city hall, as we were promised.

City of Long Beach
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